City Council stays out of PCB flap, for now

Thursday

Mar 23, 2017 at 5:02 AM

The issue of PCBs in Worcester Public Schools has become so big it should not be contained just to the School Committee, according to some members of the Worcester City Council, which discussed the issue for a good chunk of its meeting this week, ending with a vote to support current efforts to test and remove the chemicals, while holding off final judgment until test results come back in April.

Polychlorinated biphenyls, or PCBs, are chemicals commonly used in construction before they were banned by the federal government in 1979. The Environmental Protection Agency says they are “probable human carcinogens,” along with having other adverse health effects. In Worcester, PCBs have been an issue for years, but have grabbed more headlines recently amid legal efforts by the local teachers union to test affected schools and renewed dissatisfaction among teachers, students and parents that school officials are dragging their feet in the process.

Former mayor Ray Mariano is one of the driving forces behind the new round of interest in PCBs, calling for action in local media, including his column in the online Worcester Sun. His wife is a teacher at Burncoat High School, which along with Doherty High School, is one of the two schools specifically targeted by the Educational Association of Worcester teachers union. She is among the teachers that have contracted cancer. Mariano laid out his requests for what the city should do.

“Admit publicly that there is a potential serious health risk at these schools, and admit that you spent $54 million to clean up the poisons,” Mariano said. “Take the credit, but tell people that you’re on the same page and you’re there to protect their health. Develop a comprehensive plan to test, to remediate and remove the poisons from these two buildings. Put the plan in writing and put it where everyone can see it so everyone can hold you accountable … and reach an agreement with your own teachers relative to testing. Tell them you’ve got nothing to hide.”

Mariano’s requests mirrored the order by District 5 Councilor Gary Rosen, who brought the issue to the Council floor with a call for the Council to urge those with jurisdiction over the matter – Worcester Schools Superintendent Maureen Binienda and the School Committee chief among them – to “follow EPA guidelines” in testing. The school department has blocked EAW legal action to test on their terms, and while there are two tests scheduled in April, Rosen and others said there was a difference between different types of PCB testing, worrying the tests would not accurately assess the problem. Rosen said he questioned the motives of the consulting firm hired by the school department to handle the PCB situation, recalling people citing scientific literature during debates over cigarettes.

“The tobacco industry lined up consultant after consultant, science consultants, political consultants, and they told us there was no threat of nicotine, tobacco smoke,” Rosen said. “Don’t worry about it, keep smoking and smoke some more. Once we realized this was poisonous, we made laws ... I’ve heard this firm doesn’t think that there’s a problem at these schools, that the levels could be harmful. That’s not the way you do testing. You never start with a biased opinion.”

While that point of view had support, including from a current Doherty High School teacher who spoke during the meeting, it received push-back from others.

Mayor Joe Petty, who also chairs the School Committee, said the school department has been in contact with the EPA since the formulation of plans to deal with all 27 schools built in the “PCB time-frame,” and that all the plans, including those at Burncoat and Doherty, were following EPA “best practices.” In addition to the $54 million spent on replacing light ballasts, dealing with window caulking and other measures, he pointed to all the money invested in replacing or building new schools.

“I just don’t see any other community doing what we’re doing here,” Petty said. “I don’t see any district in Massachusetts doing what we’re doing. I don’t see any other district in New England doing what we’re doing … you can agree or disagree with the approach, but we’ve done something.”

Rosen, a retired chemistry teacher and former member of the School Committee, left his original order on the table, so it could come up at a future meeting. But the encroachment into territory under the School Committee’s purview did not go unnoticed by colleagues, including Petty and At-Large Councilor Konnie Lukes, a former School Committee member herself. She also served as as mayor from 2007 to 2009, when the issue was first being dealt with in Worcester.

“To assume the School Committees that have dealt with the subject over that nine-year period had no dedication, commitment or any loyalty to the children and to the teachers I think is so wrong,” Lukes said. “We should not be, as a Council, substituting our judgment for the School Committee and the staff at the School Department. It should not be done, it’s a bad precedent … everybody over at the school side has struggled with this for nine years. And for us, after 20 minutes, to substitute our judgment and tell them what to do, is so wrong, both procedurally and politically.”

Reporter Tom Quinn can be reached at 508-749-3166 x324 or tquinn@worcestermagazine.com. Follow him on Twitter @bytomquinn.